Dorothy Baker (April 21, 1907–June 17, 1968) was an American novelist. She was born Dorothy Dodds in Missoula, Montana and raised in California. April 21 is the 111th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (112th in leap years). ... 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... June 17 is the 168th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (169th in leap years), with 197 days remaining. ... 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ... Missoula, Montana viewed from the top of Mount Sentinel in 1999. ... Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Area  Ranked 3rd  - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 770 miles (1,240 km)  - % water 4. ...

She attended Whittier College then transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from which she graduated in 1929. This is where she met her future husband, the poet Howard Baker whom she married in 1930. Hoover Hall and Library Whittier College is a private college in Whittier, California. ... The University of California, Los Angeles, generally known as UCLA, is a public, coeducational university whose main campus is in the residential area of Westwood, Los Angeles, California. ... Sen. ...

For a short while, she taught French and Spanish in a high school in Oakland, California but she then went back to UCLA to complete her Master of Arts in French in 1934. Oakland, founded in 1852, is a major American city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in Northern California in the United States. ...

She wrote her first novel, Young Man with a Horn, in 1938, it was based on the life of notable jazz cornet player, Bix Beiderbecke. It was a success and she won a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, it was made into a movie in 1950 by Kirk Douglas. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship for the same book in 1942. Bix Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was a notable jazz cornet player. ... Young Man with a Horn is a 1950 movie, based on a biographical novel of the same name, based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke. ... President Jimmy Carter greets Kirk and Mrs Douglas in the Oval Office, March 16, 1978. ... Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. ...

Her next book would be Trio. She and her husband made it into a play which was quickly taken off Broadway because of its lesbian theme and a protest by a certain group of Protestant clergymen. At this moment, Dorothy was beginning to show her homosexual inclinations.

After the failure of her play, she went back to her usual novels, the next one would be Our Gifted Son written in 1948. She then wrote Cassandra at the Wedding in 1962 whose subject was of two daughters who were especially close. Baker's husband said that this novel was based on the couple's own two daughters. In 1967, she co-wrote the script of The Ninth Day in Playhouse 90. The subject of this episode is of a young man living in a group just after World War 3, when he tries to leave, he is forced by the elders to stay and marry the only young woman in the group. The Ninth Day is a German film, made in 2004 and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. ... Playhouse 90 is the name of a ninety-minute long dramatic television series that ran on CBS from 1956 to 1961. ...

Baker died of cancer at the age of 61. When normal cells are damaged beyond repair, they are eliminated by apoptosis. ...

External links

• Dorothy & Howard Baker bios from Stanford
• Answers.com page
• NY Review of Books bio